Friday, August 30, 2013

I just love it when something works straight out of the box, as they say, where I'm not grousing under my breath as I sand a piece back to where it was and start over. Ah yes. There it is, the thrill of experimentation which all too often is the agony of defeat.

I saw a question posted on facebook asking if anyone had tried milk paint on metal. I didn't click through so I have no idea how many people have already tried and succeeded. Anyway, I had two newly acquired stools and a bag each of Ironstone and Lucketts Green Milk Paint. So there I stood rubbing my chin thinking 'hmmmm....' and I dove in.

This stool was just metal and rust. I didn't do any prep work. No bonding agent or wax. I just painted right on to the bare metal.

Some rust bled through the paint (yay!) and I rubbed some paint off here and there and that was it. When it was dry I sprayed poly on it and was done.

Whereupon I started eyeballing the other stool.

Again, it was just plain metal. I slapped some Mustard Seed yellow here and there and did the same with the green. Rust peeked through and some paint chipped off leaving stool perfection.

My only regret is using a gloss spray poly on the white stool but I can rough it up some. When I get around to it. IF I get around it.

I took the green stool out to my car then turned around and brought it back inside. Maybe it will go to the booth at some later date. Or not. The white stool is a definite keeper.

I've been looking for an industrial stool like this for a long, long time and I'm loving it in MMS Milk Paint Ironstone.

Monday, August 26, 2013

When I brought this stereo cabinet home Mr. Bad Rabbit didn't say a word. He just kinda disappeared into the house. He later told me that he couldn't see how I could make anything out of it. He thought it was just one more thing stuffed into the garage.

Behold:

To my eye it's obvious what I saw in this cabinet; the grille, the trim and those gorgeous legs. The legs had me. 'Come with me, my pretty.'

I knew I wanted to paint it with one of the new MMS Milk Paint colors, Dried Lavender. And I knew I wanted the inside to be white. Other than that, distressing, choosing knobs etc. was up in the air.

It's the right color for this piece, is it not?

As you can see, the inside didn't end up being all white. I have some vintage wallpaper rolls and one of the patterns seemed perfect. It's a dusty pink with teeny paisleys. It met with Mr. Bad's approval. Surprise! (Mr. Bad is now this cabinet's biggest fan.)

Ahhhh, those cute knobs!

I remembered seeing these knobs at a local shop and was thrilled that they still had a few.

Everything came together for me on this piece. That is so often not the case, believe me. I even got the perfect chippiness.

The cabinet is greater than the sum of its parts.

And finally, the glamour shot.

Temporarily, the cabinet has found work displaying Milk Paint, but as soon as I have a replacement ready it's coming home with me.

Friday, August 23, 2013

This is my $5 Used to be Part of a Vanity nightstand. I wish I could have gotten both sides but no such luck. I love finding nightstands that used to be the sides of a vanity as they usually have more detail than traditional nightstands and most of the time they have legs. This little legless cutie-pie happened along just in time to be painted with one of three new colors from Miss Mustard Seed Milk Paint. This is Artissimo and it is a rich, rich blue. I really like it and I'm picky about blue. And lots of other colors when I think about it. And there are three colors I. simply. won't. wear.

Oh, how the mind wanders. Back to my little blue nightstand. I used hemp oil over the Milk Paint instead of wax. It's a lot faster and has its own lustre. The knobs are original to the piece, but I mod-podged a floral abstract image over them.

Before I made these knobs, I purchased some big, clear, door-knob type knobs. And had second thoughts.

They looked like headlights.

Wanna see?

I dunno. I had a really hard time choosing so I asked my neighbors to vote. Now, 4 or 5 days later, the headlights don't look so bad to me. sigh. BIG sigh.

I could go roaring in to my booth and change out the knobs before closing time .........

On second thought, I should save them to use with those 'car door handle' pulls I got a few weeks ago. Geez, I think the heat's gotten to me.

How I made the knobs:
I first painted the knobs white because that was the background color I wanted. I found a blue abstract floral print I liked and printed it out on white tissue paper. (Taped to regular printer paper.) Then I decoupaged the tissue paper onto the knobs.

There are 2 more new colors and I've used all of them now.
So pretty!

Hopefully I will have the Dried Lavender cabinet ready to post sometime this week. Meanwhile I can show you the 'before' shot. I'm excited about this piece and am already wondering where in the house it can go and what it will replace.

Cute, huh? It looks fabulous in Dried Lavender Milk Paint. I can't wait to see it finished!

Sunday, August 11, 2013

I saw this mirror-thing or What Used to be a Mirror at a yard sale two weeks ago and I had to have it. Because mirrors stacked on mirrors and hidden behind every door just isn't enough for me. I have to have ALL the mirrors.

I spotted it across a small field, leaning on a fence. It was more blank glass than it was mirror and it looked like an art piece. To me it looked like an art piece anyway.

Mirror Thing, I think I love you.

The faded yellow at the top and bottom is old newspaper that was falling out. It was the only backing. There was nothing in the middle - what little silver there was seemed to be held there by spider webs. And dirt.

Mirror Thing, I think you move me.

This is a huge, heavy mirror. And it's old, old, old. I didn't realize how old until my neighbor was reading the newspaper backing.

July 10, 1899? Holy cow!

You can see how the silver is barely hanging on. I tried wiping the dirt from the back but the silver came with it. I had to give up and realize that, oh my yes, it was held together by its own dirt.

Fragile Fragile Fragile.

I have some newspapers from 1944 that were in a trunk I purchased so I took a few pages and filled in the missing middle part of the backing. It matched the earlier newspaper perfectly, but just newspaper?
On this fragile baby?

I fitted the back with appliance cardboard while attempting to save as much of the old newspaper as I could.

Art.

We lugged it into the house and decided to put it on the wall between the office and master bedroom. It's too darn heavy to hang on the wall (studs in the wrong place) so I went about finding something for it to sit on. Then I covered the back with the stiffest paper ever, I swear, and we were ready to hang a mirror!

I have a roll of this very thick and stiff paper and I can't think of what its original purpose would be. It is extremely awkward to work with - kind of like wrestling an alligator.

When the sun hits the remaining silver the whole thing glitters.
It's so awesome! :-)

And, it's up! Uh oh, not so fast. It's too low. It cut off our heads and that just seemed odd. And wrong. Hmmmmm. Plus the stand wasn't helping. It simply refused to stay attached to the wall and left this unbelievably heavy mirror dangling from two screws. I googled for ideas and This Old House came through. Basically we would hang it like we did the mantle, that is, by using a french cleat.

To me the mirror looks like abstract art, with the added bonus of lightening up a dark area. And it's from the 1800's which makes it special, in my eyes. (Mr. Bad Rabbit isn't a huge fan.)

I haven't decided if I'll paint the frame or not. I'm leaning toward not painting it because it has a weathered patina that can only come from 100 years of existence. If I paint over it, I'll never get it back.

Friday, August 9, 2013

This is the Fan Dresser. NO. IT'S NOT. It doesn't look like that now. I really didn't plan on working on this dresser yet but things change. The Heart Dresser sold in a heartbeat (har har) and its replacement sold before I got it out of the house. I still had a dresser sized space in my booth that needed filling. So, we have Fan Dresser, and it's going to the booth this weekend.

Can you see the cracks in the photos above and below?

This dresser had some weird issues. First there was the dreaded red bleed-through. I got out the shellac and covered the entire dresser. I used a mix of paints, heavy on the chalk paint, so I was sorta dumb-struck when these cracks started appearing as the paint dried.

Now, I've had boo-boos of every kind and I don't sweat it too much anymore. I just decided to make the cracks part of the plan. Aged and distressed, right? But I did Google for an explaination just so I'd know. Apparently the shellac wasn't 100% dry and the fast drying paint pulled it apart. Sounds like crackling medium doesn't it? Hmmmm.

This is a quiet dresser. It doesn't have a lot of detail and doesn't call attention to itself. EXACTLY. Precisely why it got changed. I did a wash of CoCo over some (most) trim and the ball feet and some distressing. Easy, since the cracks did a majority of the work.

There are 4 of these cute feet - not two cute feet in front and two plain legs in back.

I wanted a tone-on-tone look so I mixed my paint to be slightly darker than the pulls. Then, of course, the antiquing wax made it darker still. (Then, of course, I made it darker still.)

A selection from my ever-growing hand mirror collection. My bedroom is starting to look like a hand mirror habitat.

The quiet dresser. (HA!) It will be in my booth tomorrow.

UPDATE
So I was sitting in my chair just kinda blankly looking at the dresser and I thought, that's really boring. So I went back to work. Everyone's done that, right?

Here's the new version of the fan dresser:

I darkened the trim and roughly distressed it.

There. I feel better now. Still quiet, but not so much that you'd hear
a pin drop.

Places my furniture has been featured!

About Me

I am an artist and graphic designer who has fallen in love with painting furniture. This furniture passion has helped me fight a rare and aggressive cancer, for which there is no cure, and I hope I can inspire others as I continue on my journey. I live a happy, creative life on a small farm with my awesome hubby, 3-1/2 cats and 3 mini horses. Plus whatever deer, turkeys, bears, foxes, hares or coyotes that wander by.
I can be reached at bad.rabbit.vintage@gmail.com